Steve Parker: Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize New Media Winner 2020
Steve Parker is an artist, musician, and curator based in Austin, Texas. Steve holds degrees in Math and Music from Oberlin College and Conservatory, Rice University, and The University of Texas at Austin.
Steve has exhibited and performed at institutions, public spaces, and festivals internationally. Steve is the recipient of the Rome Prize, the Tito’s Prize, a Fulbright, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Would you please tell us a little more about your practice?
Working with salvaged musical instruments, amateur choirs, marching bands, urban bat colonies, flocks of grackles, and pedicab fleets, I gather people into democratic, communal ceremonies that explore social behavior systems, their variability across history, and their application to contemporary life. My projects include elaborate civic rituals for humans, animals, and machines; listening to sculptures modeled after obsolete surveillance tools; and cathartic transportation symphonies for operators of cars, pedicabs, and bicycles.
My current body of work focuses on the history of listening during the conflict and its potential as a tool of resistance, disruption, and solace. In this work, I create interactive sound sculptures from salvaged brass instruments, merging historical machines of surveillance, propaganda, and revolution with the compassionate listening philosophy of Pauline Oliveros.
In this way, I reimagine the marching band’s legacy— as a tool of conflict, protest, and spectacle—to inspire new performative rituals.
What does it mean to you to be awarded the New Media Winner for the Ashurst Emerging Artist prize 2020?
It’s an enormous honor to be recognized on the international scale. Especially at a time of a global pandemic and unrest, I feel very fortunate to be able to continue to make work. I hope this opportunity will help me to dig deeper into my practice to create work that facilitates positive social change.
Tubascope, 2020.
In your opinion, how well does the contemporary art world embrace and support emerging artists?
I’m not sure how to answer this question and how to define the “contemporary art world.” I will say that I am continually blown away by the generosity and openness of fellow artists and curators and try to use this experience to model my own future behavior to be supportive of other artists. In fact, today, the art world opens up and promotes connections with people, creates processes and opportunities for sharing through the works of art that became participatory.
Sound Garden Exhibition, 2020.
How did the pandemic and the months of lockdown impact your practice? What were the challenges that you faced as an artist? How did you adapt?
The biggest challenge was finding motivation to work when making art felt trivial in contrast to the events of the world. Instead, I focused on educating myself on how to be a better advocate for justice and keeping my family safe and healthy.
Do you have any new projects in progress/any upcoming events?
Yes, in November, I have an exhibit called Day is Done at the Galveston Art Center in collaboration with the Brown Foundation Gallery at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.
In early 2021, I will be a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. As the winner of the Rome Prize, I will design a series of novel instruments and sound suits to be used in a new form of participatory opera. Merging influence from the Italian Futurists, World War II surveillance tools, commedia dell’arte, and Marconi’s early radar experiments, I will create wearable listening devices, sonic headdresses, and intuitive graphic scores. In the end, these items will be used to create a ritual performance that employs audience members as operatic performers to examine the history of listening in conflict.
Ghost Box, 2018, Salvaged brass, tactical maps, scores on paper, wires, map pins, electronics, audio, instrument case, 579 x 365cm.